


Snakes and Ladders for Insufferable Engineers and Obnouxious Hackers

by Avaesta



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Amnesia, Atem and Yuugi play swicheroo, Blood and Injury, Hacker Atem, Hacker gang, Identity Issues, KaibaCorp is a real tech company, M/M, Moral Ambiguity, Software Engineer Kaiba, eventual Prideshipping, eventual potential smut, gets technical sometimes but can be understood without following the details, hacker culture, the inner delicacies of the tech industry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-12 15:13:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29886459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Avaesta/pseuds/Avaesta
Summary: KaibaCorp's leadership in the tech industry is indisputable. With their latest product, Seto Kaiba knows no one can close to what he has built.Atem, an amnesiac hacker, is tasked with infiltrating KaibaCorp. What looked like a simple hit-and-run turned much more complicated than he had anticipatedThere was never a challenge unwelcome for both of them.
Relationships: Atem & Mutou Yuugi, Kaiba Seto/Yami Yuugi | Atem, Yami Bakura/Marik Ishtar
Comments: 4
Kudos: 11





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> How KaibaCorp would exist if it were a tech company in the real world: an annoying mix between Apple and Amazon. 
> 
> And of course, the natural enemy of a tech company is a hacker :)

_“I really like KaibaCorp’s products, and this one does not disappoint, as expect. There are smart homes and there are smart homes, and then there are KC’s smart homes. Their AI – and I cannot call it a virtual assistant anymore, not with what I’ve seen – feels like talking to a real person. No random voice activation, no robotic or monotone speech, hell, not even a listening mistake when talking to it! I can control everything in my house and I don’t even need to change or throw out my other smart speakers – these guys are so good that somehow they can interact with them and use them, even though they are from another vendor entirely. I have my own theories on how that works, but that will require some teardown in a future video, maybe some traffic capturing to see what’s going on. So let’s go over the specs…”_

He stopped listening

These videos were all the same. You’ve seen one and you’ve seen them all: techies who thought they knew everything about technology would make a grand statement about how much they love KaibaCorp, how advanced and a “gamechanger” their newly released product was, in awe and signing praises to high heavens. His employees sometimes joked that he didn’t really need a marketing department with the amount of free advertising the company got from reviewers, not to mention it’s ubiquitous presence in media.

None of it really meant anything. It didn’t matter if they sold things because of its cult following, by word of mouth, by excitable journalists, or even their own (decidedly superior) salespeople. His products were the best and everyone was better for it. However repetitive these reviews were, they served to further drive the point: there’s nothing like KC. They were the best in the market, and there was no limit to what they could do.

The “smart appliance” in question was something he’d been working on for years. It was insulting to hear it compared to other smart home assistants – they really weren’t smart, just plastic pieces pretending to talk. He watched other companies release similar products for the past 10 years or so, but they were all clearly lacking: voice support was sketchy, there was no integration with other systems, extremely limited number of devices that they could interact with and, to put the cherry on top, incredibly monopolistic. How uncreative must a developer be, to force everything to exist on their environment, on their terms. A truly superior innovation would account for all possible variables and variations, no matter the place or setting.

“Illusion Home can only be used in a network with a specific NAT setting” Primitive. Packets are packets. They will get where they need to get.

“Sirius only works on Kaleidoscope devices” Boring. Hardware should not be a limiting factor like that. Why do networks even exist, then?

“Atlanta can help through Orichalchos operating systems” Your company the worst reputation and you have the audacity to rely on it? Laughable.

They were all bad. He saw them come, and he would see them go. Nothing could stand against his own, the White Dragon.

His own copy of the program was better, of course. The Blue Eyes White Dragon – Blue Eyes for short – was not only an AI but also a complete response system, designed to control both physical and digital defenses in his home, office, buildings, and sometimes on external premises as well, depending on how ‘secure’ the networks and systems were. The military had contacted him a couple times showing interest in the offensive capacities of his unreleased programs, but arming (or defending) states was none of his business and certainly of no interest. Maybe his predecessor would disagree – they used to be military contractors after all, famous for their face recognition software – and maybe some of the executives would as well, but as long as he was in control and on the top, nothing they said or thought would not make a difference.

_“…you can totally feel the quality in the chassis, it’s very solid but surprisingly light considering it’s a metal case. I’m not a metallurgist so I couldn’t tell you what type of metal it is, but it’s definitely not aluminum. It’s a pretty color though! A very nice shade of white, slightly iridescent. The lights around the base can be dimmed and set to different colors; blue is the default setting but I was able to change it to red or to show no lights at all when messing with the app.”_

Why would anyone change the light colors? Such a waste of energy to leave beauty to be decided by others. He would have to find whoever was responsible for that oversight and have a chat with them.

In his private office it was easy to lose track of time. It was technically part of the penthouse but separate in a way that made it hard to find the entrance or located in the floor plan: it was located a floor below. He would retreat to this room at some point in the night where it was clear he would not sleep or needed more time to finish something, making sure to not keep his brother up. Mokuba would often insist on being around instead of going to sleep in an effort to get Seto to rest, and would probably be telling him to go to bed if he was around now. Slightly chilly, as it tended to be around this time of year, so he would also be complaining about the need of setting the thermostat when they could just open the windows. He would also tell him to stop working all the time and do something “fun” for once.

“Blue Eyes, set the thermostat to 68. Lock the outside doors. Turn off the TV and play some of the strings recommendations from this week’s classical playlist. Give me a summary of the planned features for this quarter’s development on external interface integrations.”

But he liked this. Building things, seeing them grow. Making them better. The best.

Immediately the room setting changed. The technobabble coming from the TV screen stopped, replaced by the pleasant sounds of violins and cellos. It might take a bit to feel the temperature change, though.

“There are 760 features divided across 16 divisions and 58 teams. Feature status are 49% Grooming, 35% Executing and 16% Completed. Current completed features focus on support for industrial control systems, with adjustments to some linguistic models to allow for verbal model construction and process adjustment. Would you like to go over them?”

Only 16% completed and 49% grooming? He was definitely going to need to talk to some managers. Still, progress was good, and working on ICS would allow for many opportunities in the future.

“No. Remind me to check on progress on grooming features by the end of this week.”

“Noted. There are pending transactions on your KaibaCoin wallet. You asked me to remind you today.”

He did not want to do this now. Cryptocurrencies should not take as long as they take to go through. He should also probably head to bed… 4:33 am was not a good time to make calculated decisions

“Postpone for tomorrow.”

“I will remind you tomorrow. A high-priority e-mail was received 2 minutes ago. Per your instructions, it is ready for viewing in your terminal.”

High-priority email at this hour? Better not be too bad. He might just not sleep or call everyone to the office depending on what it was.

_[kc-rd-sdk-build 5893][prod][release status] P-WD: FAILED_  
_FROM: kc-rd-sdk-build@kaibacorp.com_  
_TO: kc-exec@kaibacorp.com_

_The following release result is Failed because of the following issues:_  
_https://board.eng.kc.com/browse/KAISER-5543_  
_https://board.eng.kc.com/browse/KAISER-5652_  
_https://board.eng.kc.com/browse/RAIDER-223_  
_https://board.eng.kc.com/browse/GEMINI-1025_  
_https://board.eng.kc.com/browse/STEIN-2633_

_Investigation of issues underway. Per production impact criteria, rollback is being executed. Estimated time to previous version is approximately 15 minutes._

_DATE_

_2021/3/5_

_RESULT_

_(BFS, pup_p_f)_

_Applications_

_Initialize (safemode 4): OK_

_Initialize (safemode 9): OK_

_Setting (start/close): NG - KAISER-5652_

_(…)_

The email continued.

Okay. Rollback was underway. But why was something even being released now? Maybe a hotfix had gone wrong?

There were a couple other emails explaining ongoing efforts. As was policy, he was notified of any issues affecting their production environment – nothing would go unnoticed and definitely not by him – and the other emails were descriptive enough that he might not need to call everyone to a meeting right now.

He sat down and clicked on the first link.

_**[Barium][Critical] Multiple authentication failures on client** _

_**Description** _

_At 12:23:03 GMT several clients have logged an increase in 401s and 403s beyond normal threshold. Team is investigating causes. @Merkel, Paul and @Kaplan, Elizabeth are designated points of contact for investigation. See attachments for latest dump._

_**Attached:** latest-wd-p-5893-build-prod-log.dump.htm…._

Several comments detailed the discussion and ongoing efforts. It seemed to be going well and the issue had been identified. Let’s see that log dump, then: he would need all details when addressing this issue tomorrow. Failure was never an option and not to be tolerated, no matter how temporary or small.

[Download attachment?] {Yes}

[Downloading…]

{Open attachment}

Nothing happened.

Huh?

{Open attachment}

Still nothing.

Great, so these guys are not even putting the correct attachments in their tickets? Who did the hiring these days? Did he need to be involved in every minute detail for people to do their job properly?

He would deal with this tomorrow. The problem was being solved, and incompetence was not something to be handled trivially. As much as he would love to call someone and yell at them for a while, if things were being solved it could all wait until the sun was up.

“Blue Eyes, get me the names of everyone involved in the discussion, creation and solution of the issues in the latest high priority email and set a meeting for tomorrow morning with them to go over the issues. Set it for 1 hour and create a shortlist of potential replacement for all their positions.”

A beep confirmed the reception of his request.

He should go to sleep. Judging for how the last hour had gone, tomorrow would be a long day.

* * *

Atem stared at his screen.

Normally at this ungodly hour in the night he’d be sleeping. Unlike his coworkers, he was not a night owl, nor did he ingest copious amounts of energy drinks, or particularly enjoyed coming to headquarters for operations he could run from the comfort of his home. The neon-lit floor was vibrating with bass, playing whatever was requested that night along with the usual electronic themes. Some of them were laying in cushions, or huddled in front of a computer, or cheering for a teammate whose target had been tragically infiltrated. All targets would be down by the end of the stint, so the celebration wasn’t so much in the success, but in the method. They were all vipers in bushes, enjoying watching their prey slowly die to the inevitable poison brought to their networks, appliances, personal computers, cellphones… if it was electronic, they would have it.

This operation, his current objective, was a bit different to allow for early spectators.

Their clients usually applied some degree of care to keep their identities hidden. Hiring black hat hackers was incriminating enough by itself, so discretion was paramount when they could be out of business within hours of being discovered. As much as their patrons needed their services, they were no fools: you should never trust a hacker. Someone else might pay them to turn the tables on you. Maybe they could even blackmail you…

For his part, Atem did not care enough to go that way. He was picky on which contracts he chose, extremely methodical and with a sense of morality whose intricacy was lost on most of the crowd he hanged out with. He would not betray a client, not because he cared about the client or the job, but because he tended to go for targets that deserved it.

So it came as a surprise to everyone, then, when he picked the KaibaCorp contract. Despite their collective effort, they could not identify who had requested it, nor what exactly was the plan. The client had almost no instructions beyond a general desire for mayhem. There were a variety of rumors going around over his choice – he had a vendetta, or had lost someone to their previous military programs, or secretly knew who requested it. 

He did have _some_ personal reasons, true, but it was mostly for the challenge. He already knew he could do it, so why not do so?

Hacking companies was usually easy enough. But going up to the executives of a company tended to be a bit more challenging, as they tended to have more scrutiny on anything that related to their leadership. And under close supervision, maintaining a prolonged and undetected foothold was not an easy task.

Which made it perfect for him.

> $ cd /opt/Empire  
>  $ ./empire
> 
>   
>  (Empire) > listeners  
>  [!} No listeners currently active  
>  (Empire: listeners) > uselistener kkc  
>  (Empire: listeners) > set Host 14.122.199.23:8080  
>  (Empire: listeners) > execute  
>  [*] Starting listener ‘kkc’  
>  * Serving Flask app “kkc”  
>  * Environment: production  
>  * Debug mode: off  
>  [+] Listener successfully started!

The attack itself seemed simple enough. Get a file to an executive’s computer and have him open it. But these types of vectors tended to fail very quickly: higher-ups were usually trained on proper cybersecurity practices when it came to opening files or links, which made phishing hard. So they would have to create something that eased them enough, something that came from a trusted source so that their own internal alarm bells would not sound. So that they could open up and let them in through the front door. Give him all their secrets while they were getting them.

He was a snake, alright. And he would have his prey whole.

Once Yuugi had confirmed access to their ticketing server, the infiltration route was clear. Engineers needed their boards for everything, and this CEO was notorious for his own involvement in all the development details. While a normal employee would not read or open everything if it was not part of their job responsibilities or interest, intellectual greed could be used against those who did want to know everything…

> (Empire: listeners) > usestager multi/launcher  
>  (Empire: stager/launcher) > set Listener kkc  
>  (Empire: stager/launcher) > set Base64 False  
>  (Empire: stager/launcher) > set OutFile latest-wd-p-5893-build-prod-log.dump.html.hta  
>  (Empire: stager/launcher) > generate  
>  [*] Stager output written out to: /opt/Empire/downloads/ latest-wd-p-5893-build-prod-log.dump.html.hta
> 
> > D@rk_Ph4r40h@kurbs: @puzzles the file is ready  
>  > puzzles@kurbs: ok! give me 10 and it should be in  
>  > D@rk_Ph4r40h@kurbs: Depending on how diligent they are we might have to wait a couple hours for a response anyway so take your time

And now he waited. With Yuugi handling the delivery, half of the deed was done. He had complete confidence in his abilities – he had personally seen to his training so he knew what he was capable of – and could use the moment to rest for a bit. The circles under his eyes would not go away so easily but maybe he could get out the headache of the strain and…

[Ping!]

>   
>  > puzzles@kurbs: look alive, we got something. check the server >:)

That was quick. Not that he was complaining.

> (Empire: stager/hta) > [+] Initial agent BSTM21S3 from 23.445.231.22 now active  
>  (Empire: stager/gta) > agents  
>  [*] Active agents:  
>  BSTM21S3 10.20.23.33 Seto Kaiba’s Workstation Seto Kaiba’s Workstation\skaiba

Holy shit. Did it actually get to the CEO that quick?

[Ping!]

> > D@rk_Ph4r40h@kurbs: we got the big fish folks  
>  > puzzles@kurbs: :)  
>  > cl0ckWiz@kurbs: yoooo @everyone
> 
> (Empire: agents) > interact BSTM21S3  
>  (Empire: BSTM21S3) > rename kc-sk-pc  
>  (Empire: kc-sk-pc) > sc  
>  Output saved to ./downloads/ kc-sk-pc/screenshot/Seto_Kaiba_s_Workstation_2021-03-06_16-36-23.png

A small crowd had gathered behind him, staring at his monitors as he brought up…

A screenshot of Seto Kaiba’s desktop, with a ticket and mail client open.

“Way to go!”

“WOOT! YOU GOT OWNED ASSHOLE!”

“Great work! That’s the Dark Pharaoh to you!”

It was just the first step. He smiled.

This was going to be so much fun.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I always thought that the setup of Atem's identity (and lackthereof) at the beginning had SO much potential in terms of psychological exploration. The creation and discovery of identity in its many forms is one of my most appreciated fields of knowledge. It touches on so many things: psychology, sociology, anthropology, philosophy... the list goes one.
> 
> This chapter touches on that. Characterization here we go :)
> 
> For clarification, this fic will be eventually Prideshipping. Puzzleshipping might be hinted at sometimes but it's not the focus of the story

Sunlight was barely coming through the heavy drapes, drawn tight for the semblance of nighttime.

Blasted migraine.

He’d gotten home sometime in the morning, after some small celebrations in HQ for that week’s targets. Nothing out of hand (at least not for him) but the pounding always came days like these. The room was quiet, still; must have been late in the morning. Yuugi was probably at work already.

He reached for his phone: 12:07 pm, Monday, March 8th 2021

Well, it could be worse. But it was a year already, wasn’t it?

He kicked off the bedsheets, folding them over the bed, and sat up slowly. Despite the constructed darkness, the room was lit enough to walk without the need for lamp or drawing the curtains: yellow and green LEDs decorated half the room, unclear in origin but reminding him of the million things strown around. At some point he’d get down to cleaning this place but truth be told, it was hard to dispose of something whose provenance and reason he did not know. What if any of these laptops had something waiting for him? Were any of the dozen Raspberry Pi’s signaling something, somewhere, that if he stopped would trigger the destruction of _something_?

He knew he should go over them sometime. Some other time. Some time when he wasn’t scared to find answers, some time when he remembered why he thought having a wall full of network devices was a good idea to begin with. He didn’t even know half of the things in his own computer anyway.

Rising up, the curtains were drawn to the familiar, mundane and boring sight of a street parking lot. Some meters behind it, a narrow step of land, filled with brushes and some trees. And another street behind. He supposed it was better than living downtown – there were _some_ trees here, at least – but it was still a long way from a comfortable space. He reckoned that with the proper money, downtown could be better than any place, too; money he didn’t have now.

Money he might have had once.

He wasn’t going to agonize over it, but it would be nice to know.

The incoming light highlighted all the gaps in the room and all the trinkets ignored: the aforementioned network wall, monitors in a corner, trashcan full of wrappers and bottles of various origins. Cables hanging around his desk, pooling in the floor as they came and went from the walls, doors, windows. No pictures, nothing that particularly screamed “personal”. There was a bed, a closet, racks, a desk, devices: things needed, things clean, things that worked.

Things that were his.

(he supposed.)

Without Yuugi around he at least didn’t have to pretend to be at ease.

He stepped out of the room and into the bathroom. Every time he went to HQ he would always return with a sweet, acrid smell on his clothes and skin that made him think of cheap casinos and convention floors. Not that he particularly recalled being in either of those settings, but what would he know?

His reflection stared back at him from the sink mirror, naked and alone. Judging him.

Maybe the mirror wasn’t the best thing to start the day with. So he set for the shower.

The water needed to be scalding, and so it was. Washing over him, as if the heat would reveal something hidden in his skin.

It had already been a year.

He still had so little answers.

He thought that maybe getting to know the people around him again would help him regain some north – he knew he felt for this people, how his own heart flickered when they came into the room, the calm he’d feel with their smiles – but alas, no such luck. However loved these strangers were, they were still outsiders, kept at arms length.

Yuugi would probably yell at him if he were listening to him know. How they were all his friends, how they’d be here for him anytime, that knowing the past wasn’t as useful as he thought. Maybe that might have been the truth for him, but Atem felt different. What made him be who he was? Was he a different person now than he had been in the past?

Asking that question didn’t get him anywhere.

He wasn’t sure what his relationships might have been like with Jounouchi, Honda or Anzu before so he saw no point in asking them. But he had the feeling that he and Yuugi had been close. They lived together, he was the one who found him, cared for him, introduced him to this current life. And Yuugi, for all his care and gentleness, was adamant on saying much about his past.

He had to wonder where that came from. As it was right now, he figured maybe he wasn’t too good of a person before. The second chance at life was welcomed.

One year ago, Yuugi had found him in an alleyway near their base of operations, face down, bleeding on the floor. He had a gunshot in his back and a headwound, unable to stand or communicate, waiting to die.

He didn’t remember any of that, of course. He just knew it because he read his medical file while the doctors were not around.

What he did remember was this: the hospital bed, the pain, the whispers around his room. People coming and going and, in a haze, a deeper voice, firm and malicious, talking to someone…

“Consider this a warning. There will be no next time. I hope this will be a lesson in humility, dear ‘Pharaoh’…”

Then more people talking, hushed. It was all a blur. Those words stuck out for some reason, but he was 90% sure it had been a hallucination. Drugs tended to do that and judging by how he was brought in, his body had to be a pharmacy.

The doctor had explained that, although the life-threatening wounds had been treated, he had amnesia because of the head wound and would take some time to recover his memories. If he recovered them. He hadn’t understood at the time, and he still didn’t, but Yuugi seemed relieved to hear that, then a stranger on his bedside. When he asked who he was, he replied: a friend. But did not elaborate.

When he had made it back home, with a collection of bottles and pills to last a lifetime, it wasn’t much of a surprise to realize that this friend was also his housemate. Yuugi did not explain much to him in the hospital, and he was in no position to be asking questions when he didn’t even remember what his full name was. So he took it slow. This young man looked tired enough as it was. Questions would come later.

But Yuugi had cracked easily.

One day after returning, Atem had grabbed a puzzle of one of the shelves in the common area. There were several – wooden spheres and metal cages, all solved or in various stages of being so – but this one was different in many ways, the least of them being the color and size. A pyramid-like structure, with an eye in the middle and a chain attached at the top. It was cool to the touch and had pleasant shine to it. It was familiar, somehow – then again, with such an odd shape it was bound to stand out

A few minutes later, Yuugi came through the front door and watched him as he ran his fingers through the dents and crevices of the puzzle.

“Ah, sorry; is this yours? It’s very pretty”

The air went out of the room as Yuugi, struggling to find words, broke down on the floor, and cried. Sobbed and sniveled, tried to get a grip and failed as he looked up to him again, awash in the golden light of the ending day.

“Atem… I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I failed you”

Before he could say anything in response, Yuugi had gone on to his side of the apartment and shut the door behind him.

Probably not a good time for questions, then.

Late at night that day, he’d knocked on his door with two cups of tea. One chamomile, one ginger: he handed the ginger to Atem, and motioned to follow him into the living room.

Sitting down on the sofa, he began:

“I know you have many questions. It must be disorienting enough as it is, and I’ve also been gone most of the day, so I’m not going to hold you to anything. So let me tell you some stuff first and then you can ask me anything.”

He began with the basics: Atem and Yuugi had been living together for a couple years after graduating from college. They had been good roommates then, and as they both chose to stay in the city, sharing an apartment made sense money-wise. The people from the hospital were Yuugi’s friends, and they were also friends of Atem. They all knew each other through college. They all worked together.

“So who was the one who called me “Pharaoh”? That’s a weird nickname”  
  


Yuugi looked at him like he had sprouted a second head, swallowed hard, and trembled. Then laughed,

“Take it easy with the Morphine. Remember you were heavily sedated, so I wouldn’t really trust what you remember from your stay there. But this is good, you remember something! That’s part of your handle!”

“My handle?”

“Yeah! Your hacker handle! Here, let me get one of the backup laptops… God knows where your main one is now. At least your dead man’s switch takes care of the lost stuff, huh?”

He had no idea what Yuugi was on about but he had the feeling he was about to find out.

When the laptop was brough to him – a small, sticker laden thing, rugged and old – it was all much clearer. A bird with a message – “no logs, no masters” greeted him near the touchpad when he opened, the screen coming to life slowly:

> Username: D@rk_Ph4r40h
> 
> Password:

Uh…

“I don’t suppose you might know my password?”

Yuugi shrugged. “Just give it a try. We can go get one of your security keys from the vault tomorrow if you don’t remember it”

> ************
> 
> [Log in successful]

Huh?

“I knew you weren’t all gone!” Yuugi was crying again. Why was he crying? Did he cry a lot? Was this something that normal people would cry over? He felt dizzy as he was suddenly grabbed and hugged, too tight for comfort. Atem motioned for distance with a wheeze.

“Ah, sorry, I forgot your wound…”

He was still wheezing “It’s alright… let’s see what else is in here.”

The desktop brought up a simple wallpaper: a black background with a single golden eye in the middle, with some lines surrounding it and coming out of it. It reminded him of the eye in the puzzle, but it was also slightly different. Perhaps they were related?

Then, terminals opened, executing commands set by whatever past version of him set this machine. Windows opened and closed quickly as the processes finished, leaving a single one open in the end:

> $ D@rk_Ph4r40h@localhost: magician
> 
> $ magician: starting with base modules
> 
> .
> 
> .
> 
> .
> 
> $ magician started on port 580

“Magician? What is this?”

“Ah, that’s one of our tools. I wasn’t privy to all the things you built so I can’t say for all your pop-ups, but this one we worked on together, so I remember it pretty well. Why don’t you poke around and see if you remember how to use it? I’ll put up a dummy machine so you can have some fun”

Since that night, a lot of things had come back: he has a hacker (or “offensive operations”, depending on who you asked”), had no next of kin or identifiable relatives, had no full time job but lived off the contracts he got online or through their commune “millennium”, funded by some unknown benefactor years ago. As things went with his career, the less questions he asked, the better (and safer) it was, so he just accepted the things he found as they were. At some point in time, he had built an array of offensive tools that were never released but gained him considerable fame in some circles; conversely, Yuugi had built defensive and monitoring tools that they used to hide their steps, also famous in bigger and wider circles. They also had this thing going on where they would sometimes work under each other’s aliases, pretending to be one or the other to throw people off guard. The internet had an inherent anonymity when it came to human identity, true, but even syntax could be traced to its owner like verses to a poet. So he played along and switched handles and accounts every now and then.

Why, specifically? Hell knows. But if his past self had taken the time and effort to set up all those safeguards and mechanisms to do so, it must have been important. So he kept doing it, if not for his sake then for Yuugi’s, his partner in crime and cherished stranger.

(they weren’t strangers anymore, not really, but they were days were it felt like he didn’t know him at all)

Bathing was always a ritual he enjoyed. There was something metaphorical about washing and rinsing and soaking, as if by cleaning his body he could clean his mind, restore it. He took his time and relished the vapor hanging to the walls, the glass, the mirror, hiding him.

One day, he would be comfortable with this vacuum in his brain.

Today was not that day.

* * *

“For the last time Paul, I do not care for half-baked updates. Give me the whole story or say nothing at all. There were a lot of irregularities with Friday’s failure and I expect the investigation to be thorough. Do not waste my time with “we’re working on it” – that is what I pay you for, to work on it. Now go get your team and get me a report by the end of day.”

Today’s stand up was not as easy as he hoped.

“O-Of course Mr. Kaiba. I will be in touch”

The headset bleeped, signaling the end of the call. He’d been on no less than 10 calls already and there was still no clear answer over what had happened. Why had a release been done on a Friday? Why at that time? They had criteria that specified when and how releases were done, which had been apparently met, but at the same time were designed specifically to avoid situations like this. So what was happening? And to add insult to the injury, his computer was acting up, coughing up errors or taking longer to access his programs or files. Why was it so hard for things to work like they should?

He ordered a second laptop while he poked around this failure of a machine and figured out what was wrong with it. As most of his devices, his workstation was custom made and did not fall under their regular setup requirements, tailored and adjusted to his usage. He built it and he would sure find the issue with it… when things stopped being on fire.

“Mr. Kaiba, your 12pm appointment is waiting on the lobby. Should I send him in?”

“Proceed.”

His next guest was one of his Security Engineers, Yuugi Mutuo, scheduled to give a briefing on implementing device security for upper management and VPs. He had never heard of the fellow before and judging by his profile picture he was on the younger side. He was prepared to be disappointed.

The door beeped open as a short, young man walked through. His spiky hair made Seto wonder how much time this guy spent in image. Was the blond part natural…?

Was that something appropriate to ask? Probably not.

“Mr. Mutuo. The floor is yours. Do not disappoint me”

His guest stammered while he set up his presentation.

This was gonna be a long day.


End file.
